INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY Chapter 13 Social Influences and Relationships.

INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 13

Social Influences and Relationships

At the end of this Chapter you should be able to:

Understand Social Influence

Learn about Conformity

Learn about Obedience

Learn about Compliance

Learn about Group Dynamics

Social Influence

Three broad types of influence comprise the focus:

– Conformity

– Obedience

– Compliance

Social Influence: Conformity -- Classic experiments

M. Sherif (1937): Individuals asked to view a stationary light

- Task: estimate how far the light had moved when viewed in a darkened room

- (The light had not moved at all)

- Sometimes performed the task alone, sometimes with others in the room

- Estimates varied according to # of people in the room, and whether confederates gave high/low estimates

Conformity, cont’d..

S. Asch (1951): Individuals given a card with a vertical line printed on it

- Participants asked to then look at another card with three lines on it: two did not match, one did

- Task: select line that matched the length of the line on the original card; correct answer was clear

- Individuals often chose a clearly wrong option if confederates first chose a wrong option

These people are actors – told to choose the wrong answers

This is the participant: he doesn’t know the other people are part of the experiment.

Asch’s experiment cont’d..

• By the end of the experiment, most people agree with the group (even though its very easy to see that the answer is wrong).

• The pressure to conform (agree) to what other people say (do) must be very strong, because the correct answer is so easy to see.

Conformity

Results indicate that we often conform: why? Two influences: informational and normative

– Informational: We seek others’ opinions on what is correct if we suspect they might know better than we do

– Normative: We want to fit in, be liked, avoid looking foolish

Minority Influence

Unanimous majority influences us powerfully

Yet: one person’s dissent can break the hold of the majority– Appears not to stem from creation of an

‘alliance’ – occurred even when dissenter also chose an incorrect response, as long as it differed from that chosen by the majority

Factors that affect Social Conformity

Size of Group: Conformity tends to increase as the size of the group increases. But there is little change in conformity once the group size reaches 4-5.

Anonymity (i.e. secrecy): When participants could write their answers down rather than announce them in public, conformity dropped.

Factors that affect Social Conformity

Ambiguity (i.e. uncertainty) / Difficulty of Task: When the (comparison) lines (e.g. A, B, C) were made more similar in length it was harder to judge the correct answer and conformity increased. The more difficult the task the greater the conformity.

Status and Knowledge: If someone is of high status (e.g. your boss) or has a lot of knowledge (e.g. your teacher), they might be more influential, and so people will conform to their opinions more. The higher the status the higher the conformity

Social influence: Obedience

Some obedience obviously necessary for life in a complex society

But: Why do we obey commands that result in atrocities – Nazi death camps, Khmer Rouge massacres, Soviet “purges”, etc.?

Two possible sources of obedience: dispositional trait of obedience and situational aspects

Personality and Obedience

Authoritarian personality: beliefs about power, obedience, and importance of strong leadership

More investigations since the 50s and 60s have focused on related fears/ beliefs / attitudes: – Need for order or structure– Intolerance of ambiguity– Concern with death and societal instability

Situations and obedienceHannah Arendt, in writing about the trial of

Adolf Eichmann, who engineered the death and execution of 6 million Jews and

other minorities in the Nazi death camps:

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him… terribly and terrifyingly normal.”

In other words …

The situation was the prime variable to investigate What aspects of the situation are salient in driving

this kind of obedience? How coercive need it be?– Milgram’s experiments: sought to answer

these questions– Series of experiments run that have influenced

decades of thought and follow-up studies

Milgram’s experiments

Participants: told they would be delivering shocks in a learning experiment – No shocks were ever actually delivered:

confederates were actors– Shock level: dials labeled mild to deadly: 15 to

450+ mv “Teacher” (participant) and “Learner” (confederate)

separated into 2 cubicles, but could hear each other “Teacher” instructed to shock “learner” in increasing

amounts of voltage, whenever learner made a mistake

This is the This is the participant, participant, the person the person we are we are interested interested in– what in– what will he/she will he/she do?do?

Milgram’s experiments cont’d..

Method: 40 males aged 20-50 were found to take part (through a newspaper advertisement), and paid $4.50 to participate in a study regarding 'memory'.

Participants were introduced to a man called, Mr. Wallace. Mr. Wallace was tied into a chair with electrodes on his hands.

The participant was taken to another room and told to ask the Mr. Wallace questions (using a telephone).

Milgram’s experiments cont’d..

Each incorrect answer was punished with an electric shock (given by the participant), beginning at 15 volts (very mild), going up by 15 volts for every incorrect answer up to 450 volts (danger - severe shock, xxx). Mr. Wallace said he had a mild heart condition.

Shocks were received in silence up until 300 volts. Then Mr. Wallace complained of having heart trouble and hit on the door and asked to be let out. He then refused to answer any more questions. After a short while he became silent: maybe unconscious or perhaps dead.

Milgram’s experiments cont’d..

If the participant questioned the experimenter, they were told four things:

1. Please continue,2. The experiment requires you to continue,3. It is essential that you continue,4. You have no choice, you must continue.

If the participant still refused to give any more shocks, they were allowed to stop.

Milgram’s experiments -Result

No one actually stopped below the level of intense shock.

22.5% stopped at 315v (extremely intense).

65% continued up until the maximum shock of 450v.

Milgram’s experiments -Result

BUT…

Participants showed signs of extreme tension in experiment

(biting fingernails, sweating, trembling, stuttering, groaning: three participants actually had full blown seizures)

During debriefing the participants completed a follow up questionnaire.

84% of them felt glad that they participated, 74% learnt something of personal importance.

Milgram’s experiments -Result

Profound ethical questions:– Under what conditions can you cause

someone to believe that they have behaved in this way?

– Is it ethical to do this to someone? (Self-knowledge, stress, etc.)

– Does the gain from doing the experiment outweigh the distress caused to the participants (the teachers)?

Compliance

Norm of reciprocity: we feel compelled to comply when someone has helped us in the past

2 related techniques:– “Door in the face” technique: If a large request is

followed up by a smaller request, compliance with request increases dramatically: “You conceded, now I have to concede”

– “That’s-not-all” technique: “freebie” offered after initial offer tendered, and price seems more reasonable than if both were initially included in the offer

Group Dynamics

Study of mutual influences of individuals and groups on each other

Behaving in groups:– Social facilitation: “mere presence” effect:

we compete harder when others are nearby

– Social inhibition: the opposite effect – we sometimes perform more poorly when others are near

Social Loafing

What if no one is the “audience,” and therefore all must perform?– Ringelmann (1913): in a group of men,

each pulled less hard than if pulling solo– Latane (1981): “social loafing”

People work less hard in groupsConsistent across cultures, across

many variables

Deindividuation

Sometimes: others’ presence drastically changes our behaviors– Riots, lynch mobs, etc.: behavior can

become disinhibited, cruel, vicious– Deindividuation: we lose awareness of

ourselves as individuals, feel less responsible for our behavior

– Role we play: may obscure our individuality as well

Thinking in Groups

Group polarization:– Groups decisions are more extreme than

those we make on our own

“Risky shift”– Greater willingness for a group to take

risks than when we are acting as individuals

Helping and Altruism

How do social environments influence helping behavior?

“The Bystander Effect”– Our understanding of the situation influences

our decisions on acting or not acting– Pluralistic ignorance: if others are not doing

anything, probably nothing needs to be doneProblem: others are using the same

reasoning…

The Bystander Effect and the murder of Kitty Genovese

Kitty Genovese: murdered on a public street (1964) – Attack lasted over an hour– Witnessed by more than 35 people (from upstairs

windows overlooking the street)– Not a single person helped, not a single person

called the police– Why?

The Bystander Effect

Diffusion of responsibility: we feel less compelled because we feel less responsible

Each bystander feels increasingly less responsible if there are many bystanders

We weigh the costs of helping as well as the benefits: – Physical danger weighed as well as

psychological cost – i.e., being late if one stops to help